Whose Baby?

by Janice Kay Johnson

  The boardwalk was deserted, the stores dark and closed. Laughter and voices drifted from a restaurant, but nobody sat outside the way they did in midsummer. She took the concrete stairs two at a time, wanting to lose herself on the dark beach, with only the moon and the surf for company.

  She wished Adam had never been part of her life here. That they hadn’t raced across the beach with the girls shrieking in delight. That he hadn’t gotten wet rescuing the Japanese float for Shelly. Sat at the table every Saturday in her bookstore, reading contentedly. Bought her a new couch, taught her the loneliness of her bed and the pleasures of sharing it. Cooked in her tiny kitchen, hung his toothbrush in the equally small bathroom.

  Absorbed in memories, Lynn stubbed her toe on a half-buried boulder and fell painfully to her knees. Tears sprang into her eyes, but she shook them away, angry at herself.

  I…care.

  Couldn’t he have tried? she thought pitifully. Pretended, just a little bit?

  Lied? she asked herself harshly. Was that what she wanted? Give him credit. At least he was too honest for that.

  She pulled herself to her feet and kept walking. White fingers of foam led her to the water’s edge. Lynn walked parallel to the crashing surf, her way better lit now by moonlight. The wind bit through her wool sweater, stung her eyes, tangled her hair, but she reveled in the solitude and the cold, the white feathers and the steady throb of the surf.

  Hugging herself, Lynn kept thinking, I could be home in Portland. Debating with Adam, laughing with him, savoring the delicious anticipation of bedtime. Is this really better?

  Couldn’t she have loved him in silence? He might have come to love her in turn, mightn’t he? Why had she given up hope that he would?

  I…care.

  Couldn’t that be enough? she begged herself. Was that so terrible? Didn’t the greatest of passions often age into something no more exciting? So what if he still thought about Jennifer. She was gone, and Lynn was here. With time, he would think about his first wife less.

  She stopped and faced the breakers as wisps of cloud raced in front of the moon. Why wasn’t I patient? she thought miserably. Why couldn’t I…settle?

  Wasn’t having something better than nothing?

  How could she convince Rose and Shelly that she’d made the right choice if she didn’t even believe it herself?

  Lynn found a boulder to provide a windbreak and backrest. Huddled against the night and her own unhappiness, she remembered every moment of her married life, every word Adam had spoken, every touch. She tortured herself with full knowledge of what she had thrown away, and began to see that she was a coward.

  She had been so terrified of losing Adam slowly, she had brought on a quick, clean break. She knew she’d be okay on her own. She’d done this before. What she had no idea how to do was coax a man into loving her, or how to endure his indifference when he made it plain.

  Burying her cold face in the scratchy wool of the sweater sleeves, Lynn heard herself as clearly as if she’d spoken aloud. She’d be okay on her own. She’d done this before.

  Oh, God. She had told Adam once that being a single mother came naturally to her, that it was the pattern she knew. She was comfortable as a mother, but not as a wife.

  In her fear, she had made no effort to fight for Adam. Being a wife was too scary. Run and hide.

  Her tears soaked the sweater sleeves, her nose dripped. If only she hadn’t told him she loved him! Lynn thought wretchedly. Bitter, angry words could be taken back, but not her naked declaration.

  I don’t want to lose you, he’d said, but how could they go on as they had before, when neither of them would be able to forget that one of them loved and one didn’t?

  For the girls’ sake, would he agree to live that way? Was she brave enough to try, if he would give her the chance?

  The rags of clouds were knitting together into dark masses and the wind smelled of rain. Chilled to the bone, Lynn started back along the beach, the wind shoving her from behind. She was so cold! Her feet were numb and blockish in thin sneakers. Dressed so inadequately, she shouldn’t have stayed as long as she had.

  The first icy shards of rain came as she turned her back on the ocean and picked her way carefully between rough rocks and piles of driftwood toward the steps up to street level.

  She was almost there when she saw that a man leaned against the railing only feet from the opening to the beach. With the lamplight behind him, he was dark, anonymous and imposing. She hesitated. Probably he only wanted his solitude, as she had, but it was awfully lonely out here if he were to threaten her. Still, there was no other easy way up the concrete and granite bulkhead, and she was very cold.

  Taking a breath for courage, she bent her head and hurried toward the stairs. She had set foot on the bottom one when he spoke.

  “Lynn?”

  “Adam?” she whispered. The wind whipped his name away, unheard.

  “I’ve been waiting for you.” He didn’t move.

  Slowly she climbed the few stairs. Hip against the railing, he faced her. His expression changed when he got a good look at her in the yellowish light from a sodium lamp.

  “You’ve been crying.” He sounded angry. Gruff.

  “My eyes watered. The wind…” Why was he here?

  He swore and stepped forward. The relief was overwhelming. Right this second, it hardly mattered why he’d come. Oh, how easy it was to let herself be enveloped in his warmth and strength.

  “I’m sorry,” she tried to tell him, but had no idea if he heard her.

  He was swearing still, growling something against her hair. It seemed to be an echo. “God, I’m sorry. You’ve got to forgive me, Lynn.”

  “Forgive you?” What was he talking about? She tried to pull back, but his arms tightened, binding her to him.

  “How did you find me?”

  “The baby-sitter.” At last his grip relaxed. “Can we go home, Lynn?” His hand, cold enough, caressed her frozen cheek. “You need a hot bath.”

  “Yes. Okay.” I…care. Of course he did. That had to be enough.

  Her legs were reluctant to move. Adam had to steer her along the sidewalk, stop her with one hand from stepping out into the street in front of a lone car passing through town. Even her thoughts were sluggish now.

  His Lexus was in its usual spot in the gravel lot. Adam is here, she thought, amazed.

  The staircase seemed to go on forever. At the top, Adam bundled her inside. She stood in the kitchen, beginning to shake, and was distantly aware that he was paying Alicia and seeing her out.

  When she heard water running into the tub, she shuffled down the hall to the bathroom. Still in his own heavy sweater, he was on his knees, testing the water temperature. When he saw her, his expression brought to life an ember of warmth inside her.

  His jaw muscles flexed. “Shall I help you get undressed?”

  The glow spread. “No. I’m okay. Just chilly.”

  “Damn it, Lynn—” He bit off whatever he’d been going to say. “I’ll boil water for tea. I’ll get you something to put on.”

  He started to brush by her, but paused, his body touching hers from thigh to chest. She felt the vibration when he spoke. “I hope you did all the thinking you intend to do.”

  She nodded dumbly.

  “Good.” He touched her cold cheek again, then left the bathroom, returning a moment later with her ugliest, most voluminous flannel nightgown and her old wool bathrobe.

  He was obviously not setting the stage for seduction.

  Lynn had plenty of time in the bath to worry anew as she thawed. Why was he sorry? What did she have to forgive him for? If anyone needed forgiving, it was her!

  When she’d quit shivering and her skin glowed pink, she got out, toweled herself dry and put on her old gown and robe. Her hair. Lynn groaned, glimpsing the tangles in the mirror. If only she’d corralled her curls instead of letting the wind whip them into a frenzy. She took ten minutes to bring her recalcitrant hair to re
asonable order and assemble it in a simple braid down her back.

  Hope had thawed along with her flesh, but so had old fears. Adam might be here to talk about a divorce. Or to ask her to stay in their arrangement, while explaining gently how much he had loved his Jenny and why he would never be able to love her the same way. He might even be angry and planning to fight her for custody of the girls.

  No, even terrified, she knew better. He would never do that. Not to her, not to Shelly or Rose.

  He waited in the living room, sitting with his elbows resting on his knees, holding a steaming mug in one hand. Although she had made no sound, he looked up the moment Lynn appeared in the doorway. His gaze not leaving hers, he stood. “Here’s your tea.”

  “Thank you.” She held her head high as she ventured into the living room and took the mug from him. “I was cold.”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t die of hypothermia.” He sounded angry again.

  “I was on my way home.”

  “Were you trying to commit suicide?”

  “I was walking on a cold night!” she fired back. “I wanted to think! You told me to. I had to be alone.”

  He rotated his shoulders as if they ached. His tone was almost conversational. “What did you think about?”

  Her tongue touched her lips. “You. Us,” she admitted huskily.

  “Your conclusion?”

  She wrapped both hands around the mug, willing its heat to give her courage. “I was wrong. I…”

  His expression was shuttered, just like that. “You don’t love me.”

  “I shouldn’t have told you I do,” Lynn corrected him. “I was pressuring you. We had an arrangement, and it was working fine. I…” She bowed her head.

  “I got scared.”

  “Scared of what?” Adam asked, voice gritty.

  “I know you like me and…and want me. At least I assume…” She stole a look at him and hurried on. “I was afraid after a while you wouldn’t. That I wouldn’t be able to stand it.”

  “You must have known I was falling in love with you,” he shocked her by saying.

  Afraid to grasp the hope that she had been nursing all along, Lynn looked up. “No,” she said just above a whisper. “No, I had no idea.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “But you don’t. You couldn’t make yourself say the words. ‘I care.’ That was the best you could get out.”

  He touched her at last, his hand cupping her chin. In a slow, deep voice, he said, “I love you desperately and passionately. I was just idiot enough not to know it.”

  “Not to know…” This felt surreal. A too-easy ending to a daydream. She didn’t dare believe him.

  Adam’s mouth twisted. “Sit down. I need to tell you about Jennifer.”

  She obeyed, watching the expressions on his face, the anguish, the regret, the rueful awareness of how blind he’d been, as he talked about his young wife and their brief marriage.

  “They kept saying she was dead. Wanting me to sign papers so that her organs could be harvested.” He swore. “What a word. Harvested. I signed, but deep inside I didn’t believe she was dead. She’d open her eyes suddenly and smile. Only she didn’t. They cut Rose—no, Shelly—out of her, and then the surgeons took Jenny away. I didn’t see her after they pulled the plug. I didn’t want to at the funeral home. I always thought an open casket was macabre.”

  “You never said goodbye,” she said, understanding.

  “I thought I had. But I dreamed about her. I missed her like hell,” he said simply. “I felt guilty when I met you and stopped missing her.”

  Somehow Lynn had set down the mug and was gripping Adam’s hand in hers. He held on so tightly her bones ached.

  “I started falling in love with you that first time we met, at the hospital. I wanted to touch your hair.” With his free hand he stroked it now, and she felt as if each strand was an exquisitely sensitive nerve. “When we made love last night, you said, ‘I want you,’ and it wasn’t enough. I felt like a bastard, but I needed you to say, ‘I love you.’ What didn’t occur to me was why I needed to hear those words.”

  “But when I did say them…”

  Their grip shifted; their fingers curled together. “Do you know what I felt?” he asked. “Triumph. Exhilaration. She loves me, I thought. It took me five minutes too long to realize that I love you back.”

  “You didn’t come after me,” she said painfully.

  He made a sound that hurt to hear. “I had to…adjust. I’m a deliberate man. I like to be sure.”

  “But you are?”

  “Jennifer,” he said, “was my first real love. I want to believe we’d still be happily married if she had lived. But I’ve changed in these three, almost four, years. When I try to see her being the mother you are, I wonder. Jenny was used to having her way. A baby was a grand new toy to her, I’m afraid.”

  “I think,” Lynn said carefully, “all women feel that way when they’re pregnant for the first time. The baby seems so unreal! Of course, everything will go the way the books say it will. You don’t really understand how unrelenting having a baby is until you’re on your own and it’s too late to chicken out. I saw that picture of her. Pregnant, I mean. She looked so proud and so happy. I can’t imagine that she wouldn’t have loved Rose as much as you do.”

  His mouth tilted into a crooked smile. “Maybe so. But she’s dead. Part of me will always regret she didn’t have a chance to be a mother. We had such dreams. Reality is, I’m the lucky one. I have Rose and Shelly and you. I wouldn’t go back if I could. I want to wake up next to you every morning for the rest of my life, make love to you every night, use our vacations to go to Disneyland with the kids. I want to argue with you, clean the kitchen with you, and grow old with you. If—” he swallowed “—you can forgive me for hurting you like that.”

  Lynn tumbled into his arms. “Oh, Adam,” she mumbled against his neck, “I’m the one who almost messed everything up. I think it was just like with Brian. I wasn’t comfortable. I like…controlling everything. Always knowing where I stand. I got a little panicky, and I convinced myself I’d be better off the way I was before.”

  “Were you?” He held her away from him, his eyes dark, turbulent.

  She laughed and cried at the same time. “These last months have been the best time in my life. Knowing you love me, too, is like…like…”

  “Buying a thousand shares of Microsoft when it went public?”

  The laughter won, though her cheeks were wet. “Something like that. I was thinking more of fireworks and Christmas in July and all those clichés.”

  “Fireworks,” he said, his thumb teasing her lower lip, “we can manage.”

  His kiss proved the point. Giddy from relief and love and the onslaught of desire, Lynn whispered, “Let’s go to bed.”

  “Mmm.” Adam gripped her shoulders and set her away from him. “One last thing. I’d like to wake up next to you every morning, but I’ll settle for four mornings a week if you want to keep the store here. You need to know that.”

  “Thank you.” She pecked him on the lips. “But I hate the drive, and I want to be with you. I might take a while off and think about what to do next. Or, hey, I might decide to take on Powell’s Books after all! In my own small way, of course.”

  “Uh-huh. And now—” he stood and held out a hand for hers “—your offer is sounding better and better.”

  They did, of course, pause partway down the hall to watch thankfully as their daughters slept.

  “Right now,” Adam said softly, his words tickling Lynn’s ear, “I feel blessed.”

  “Triply blessed,” she agreed, and blinked away tears that were too joyful to shed.

  Adam scooped her into his arms. “Let’s go make some fireworks!”

  They did that, too, neither forgetting the words that counted, after all.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-8663-8

  WHOSE BABY?

  Copyright © 2000 by Janice Kay Johnson.

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